The Relationship Between the Congruency in Perceptions of Coach Leadership Behaviours and Perceptions of Cohesion and Performance

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between perceptual congruency of coaching leadership and perceptions of cohesion and performance. Sixty coaches and 199 athletes responded to two leadership inventories: the Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory (DTLI; Callow et al., 2009) measuring transformational leadership and the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) measuring transactional leadership. Additionally, athletes indicated perceptions of cohesion by completing the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron et al., 1985) and perceptions of personal performance through a self-report performance measure (Spalding, 2010). Results indicated that over-evaluative athletes (i.e., those who rated the coach favourably) held greater perceptions of all four dimensions of cohesion (all p 's ≤ .05) and the dimension of Performance Achievement (p < .001) than did under-evaluative athletes (i.e., those who rated the coach less favourably). The findings provide evidence of the role congruency has upon perceptions of the group environment.